Peter Stuyvesant

Peter Stuyvesant (1610-August 1672) was the Director-General of New Netherland from 1647 to 1664, succeeding Willem Kieft. He was the last Dutch director-general of the colony, and Richard Nicolls became its English governor in 1664 after England conquered the colony.

Biography
Peter Stuyvesant was born in Peperga, Friesland, Netherlands in 1610, and he was expelled from the University of Franeker for seducing the daughter of his landlord. He then joined the Dutch West India Company, and the company sent him as a commercial agent to Brazil in 1630. In 1638, he moved to the Dutch naval base of Curacao, and he served as acting governor of Curacao, Aruba, and Bonaire from 1642 to 1644. In April 1644, with an armada of 12 ships and 1,000 men, he attempted to reconquer Saint Martin from Spain, but the Spanish gathered supplies from Puerto Rico, and Stuyvesant's right leg was crushed by a cannonball and amputated. Stuyvesant was forced to wear a wooden peg-leg, and, in 1645, he was chosen as the new Director-General of New Netherland. He had to rebuilt the wartorn and nearly-destroyed colony in the aftermath of the disastrous Kieft's War, and he asserted his authority. Stuyvesant was an opponent of religious freedom, refusing to allow Lutherans or Jews to settle in his colony, and even torturing a Quaker convert and declaring that people could be punished for harboring Quakers.

Conflicts with neighbors
In the summer of 1655, with seven vessels and 700 men, Stuyvesant conquered New Sweden on the Delaware River, and, in his absence, Pavonia was attacked by Native Americans during the "Peach War". In 1664, four English ships bearing 450 men, commanded by Richard Nicolls, seized the Dutch colony. On 6 September 1664, Stuyvesant was forced to capitulate to the English, and he died in Manhattan in 1672.